Just say NO...

Tomorow is national NO day for Greeks everywhere. It is the 71st anniversary of that day in 1940 when the Greek prime minister refused passage to the Italian ambassador. Passage was a way to ask for sovereignty over another land. It is a way to declare war and blame the other party for it. "Will you grant me passage" is the question and if the answer is "no" then one just passes by force. In the fifties war was rebaptized as a "police action". Nowadays things are much more confusing.
Today, October 27th 2011 will go down in history as national YES day. As opposed to that day when we said no to fascism 71 years ago this is the day we say yes to credit write off. I am not sure how it works, nobody realy is, but we are erasing one half of our debt in some kind of strange agreement with our European partners. We can all sigh a sigh of relief knowing that half of that national debt of ours was finaly miraculously erased. In the same way it appeared it simply vanished. A debt of 300-700 billion euros, depending on who you believe, will now be reduced to 150-350 billion euros. By 2020 it should round out to 120% of GNP. That is if we continue to raise taxes, drop salaries and reduce pensions.
I am filled with awe as I look around this great country of narrow sidewalks, roads filled with potholes, third world school fascilities and MASH style hospitals. Of ill health care, of line-ups, of red tape, of a corrupt civil service, of non-existent government services on all levels. I look around at our glorious leftover infrastructure so little changed from the days of our little military junta. Those habits of favouritism and who you know civil service were so well entrenched that a quarter century of democracy could not erase. Even joining the EU could not undo these old habits. The EU has bad habits of its own. It is science fiction to believe that even one tenth of that debt has ever been spent in Greece.
So what ever happened to the Alexander The Great Plan? Just stay tuned...